Diary of a Tuscan Bookshop: A Memoir

I’d better make a list of all the things that make me feel good. Lists save lives. They keep our memories alive, as Umberto Eco says in The Infinity of Lists. Here goes: Laura’s voice message letting me know she’s at an LGBT+ rights demo like she’d tell me she was popping down to the shops, and warning me not to pick up if her boyfriend calls; he’s looking for her, and fretting because he can’t find her, and anyway he ‘doesn’t even know the difference between gay and straight’ Raffaella’s voice messages and her joy when she receives our books Maicol tearing through the cobbled streets of Lucignana, drunk on life My great-niece Rebecca joining the bookshop family and the certainty her cynicism will blossom into something completely unexpected My father’s existence The coffee I’m about to have with Tessa, who’s on her way to us on her motorbike with a box full of bookmarks, our official bookmarks she’s been gifting us since that day after the fire, with a quote from her mother Lynn Emanuele Trevi and Giovanni Giovannetti absconding from the literary conference in Lucca, later found smoking weed in a car in Piazza San Michele by a security guard, who happened to be the writer Vincenzo Pardini, so he let them go Ernesto and Mum cuddling on the sofa Daniele’s Barbara and Maurizio’s Barbara Ricchi e Poveri Donatella being sure Romano fancies her My mother trying to escape her hospital bed as soon as I look the other way Tina’s mother Mike quickly wrapping a towel around his waist as I walk into his garden and Mike leaving Brighton with two large boxes of tea stashed in his boot, concocting a story for the customs officers The anglers reading Louise Glück and Lawrence Ferlinghetti on the Segone The words I only ever hear in Lucignana: lollers and slackies and ‘bumming down’ to pee My own continued, miraculous existence.

A bookshop is a school – a window looking out on a world that we only think we know. But to really understand the world we have to read, because those who write are always inspired by something that doesn’t quite fit the mould. And when things don’t add up, authors must face the paradox of life and venture into the darkness of the human mind – become at one with that darkness, even – there is no other way.

From which I conclude (in case anyone had any doubt) that the publishing industry is almost entirely propped up by women, and these mothers in particular were able to pass on their love of books to their children. Who’d have thought that, in this day and age, a group of twenty-something’s first reaction upon seeing something beautiful would be to share it with their mothers?

People want stories; it doesn’t matter who wrote them, they need stories to take their mind off things, stories to identify with or to take them elsewhere. Stories that won’t hurt, that will heal a wound, restore trust, instil beauty into their hearts.

Las cosas no se nos ocurren, las cosas se incuban, fermentan, ocupan nuestras fantasías mientras dormimos. Las cosas avanzan por su cuenta, recorren un camino paralelo en algún lugar de nuestro interior del que no tenemos ni el más remoto conocimiento y, en un momento determinado, llaman a la puerta: aquí estamos, somos tus ideas y queremos que nos escuches.

La comunidad es una familia especial de la que uno se siente parte integrante, en la que se echa una mano a quien lo necesita y se comparten penas y alegrías.

No necesitamos entenderlo todo de la vida, pero sí tener la experiencia de la ternura, que nos atraviesa, nos induce a hacer gestos, acciones, nos guía.

Et voilà. Trenta minuti di forno ed è uscita una favola. E io felice di aver saputo di cosa fosse fatto quell'"un po'". L'un po' "di chi pesa senza bilancia" è ciò che fa impazzire i critici, i filologi perché è pura invenzione, è una sillabazione innata che non puoi insegnare, catalogare, regolare. Un filo q.b. è la sconfitta accademica. E allora ben vengano i George Steiner, i Cesare Garboli, le Colette e le Virginia Woolf, le Elsa Morante e tutti quelli e quelle che sapevano che col filo d'olio si fa la letteratura.

And then again, Lucignana, Costa Rica, here, there, inside, outside – these are abstractions. It’s all a matter of perspective. That’s what I should answer to those who ask what possessed me to open a bookshop in the middle of nowhere. The thing is, Lucignana doesn’t know it’s in the middle of nowhere; as far as I’m concerned New York is in the middle of nowhere.

A Manifesto for Aspiring Booksellers Live your life reading Welcome the people walking through your door as readers, not customers Never fancy yourself better than your readers Pay attention to what your readers ask for – it will open up new horizons Never betray your readers by recommending the wrong book Pick ‘your’ authors and give them visibility Honour Sylvia Beach, every day of the week Always offer a cup of tea Flowers – don’t forget flowers Remember to celebrate Virginia, Emily, Jane, and all the others

My own magical thinking keeps telling me to bring her home, even with a broken vertebra, even if she could die. She wanted to die in my arms and I can’t leave her on a balcony with her neck stuck in a brace and no house around her. I just can’t.

When I walk barefoot on the rocks warmed by the sun I feel their feral freedom, the freedom of Tiziana, Alessandra, of my mother. I know that molecules of that same primeval strength endure in our blood – we are made of them, made of defeat and rose petals.

Now that summer’s here, with its calm and its delightful evening breeze, I’m more convinced than ever that if I had to leave this place, I’d die. The landscape, yes – but the real magic is in the relationships. These streets are my home; with these people I can be the way I am, no need to add anything. Sometimes, like Mike, I walk barefoot – walk the earth, quite literally, feeling the earth beneath me, feeling the warmth of the sun, like a plant.

My mind goes to Annie Ernaux’s A Woman’s Story, to the different feelings she experienced when her mother died. Another fragile, modern daughter, another ancestral, rock-solid mother figure, another gulf between them. And guilt, too, flickering through it all, involuntary contractions of the soul that logic cannot defeat.

There are hard days at the bookshop, too – days with few visitors, and none of them worth writing home about, the kind who’ll hear about us and trek all the way up here just for a selfie. Yesterday, two girls monopolised the Adirondacks for over two hours, chatting and reading, then they left the books on the chairs and their cigarette ends in a plant saucer. One of them didn’t even go in; the other had a quick look but evidently found nothing to her taste.

Here, people look for something they won’t find elsewhere, something that won’t disappoint them – here, they really look. It’s the aura that surrounds all independent bookshops.

Whenever an ambulance arrives in Lucignana the news spreads like wildfire, as if the houses themselves were relaying the message. I’m convinced Jan Koum, who created WhatsApp, must have studied how communication works in little mountain villages: as soon as someone changes their status, anyone connected to that person will know. We’re the original social network, a network forged through first communions, confirmations, imaginary footballer boyfriends, the first taste of those forbidden pleasures, and pretending to be famous bands.

We don’t have to understand everything in life, but we do need to find compassion and let it in, deep inside our bones, let it guide our thoughts and our actions. That’s how we pick up someone else’s thread, and slowly pull them out – and then another thread, and another, and another again.

Our 12-square-metre cottage has a little window that looks out on Monte Prato Fiorito. In pride of place on the windowsill you will always find one of these three books on a little iron stand: Virginia Woolf’s Garden by Caroline Zoob, Emily Dickinson’s Herbarium, and Alice in Wonderland illustrated by Tenniel.

When his daughter Vania was born, I was so jealous that if we were left alone, I would pinch her hard until she cried. She was just a baby, but I was a seven-year-old who saw things far away – I wasn’t exactly having an easy time of it either.

Today’s orders: The Other Woman by Colette, Due vite by Emanuele Trevi, The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald, Il bosco del confine by Federica Manzon, Il giardino che vorrei by Pia Pera, Loving Frank by Nancy Horan, Storia di Luis Sepúlveda e del suo gatto Zorba by Ilide Carmignani.

I think this has something to do with comfort reading: you read to be comforted, and cry when the comfort kicks in.

Childhood holds sway over all other seasons of life. It makes no difference whether it was happy or unhappy, that is where we will always return to answer for our actions. I think this is because childhood is completely devoid of ambition, of any interest in status, roles or accolades – except for the need to love and be loved.

At 8 a.m. he left and at 8.29 he called to say there was no need for her to leave the house, he’d be grabbing newspapers and cigarettes on his way back. That was the last time she heard his voice. They’d hugged at the door as if it was the first time, or the last, as they did every time.

I connect it to Mayakovsky’s for a simple reason: theirs are both ‘active’ suicides, provocative, choreographed almost, nothing short of performances.

Cooking – real cooking – belongs to those who taste, who savour, daydream a little, then add a dash of oil, a sprinkle of salt, a sprig of thyme. To those who weigh without scales, time without clocks, watch the roast without looking. Those who mix eggs, butter and flour following their inspiration, like a benevolent witch.

Around lunchtime on 28 March 1941, by the river Ouse, Leonard Woolf saw a walking stick. Hers. Virginia had drowned herself. She was lying on the riverbed, her pockets full of rocks. First, however, she’d planted her cane on the shore, firmly erect. As if to say, I cannot carry on, but you must. We do our best, Virginia. We do our best.

There is a section in our bookshop I’m particularly fond of – biographies. Let’s just say that, in the famous controversy between Sainte-Beuve and Proust, I’ve always sided with Sainte-Beuve: authors don’t write in a vacuum, they draw from their own obsessions, from the lump of their emotions, from the void within them.